Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU) 141

The Design and Implementation of Smart Trash

Bin
Fady E. F. Samann

College of Engineering, Department of Computer and Communication, Nawroz University, Duhok, Kurdistan
Region Iraq

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a cost-effective design of an intelligent waste container for small-scale cases. This system is based
on Arduino Nano board and an ultrasonic sensor to monitor the fullness level of the container and give SMS alerts
using a GSM module. The system is powered by lithium battery power bank supported by solar cell panel. The system
provides an option of charging external portable devices using the power bank. Moreover, the system will store usage
events, recorded by PIR sensor, and fullness events on a memory card, which is also used to play audio message
using a speaker, when the bin is being used. Finally, the system is implemented successfully with an acceptable
overall cost for the intended application. The system performance was found satisfactory according to the obtained
test results.
KEYWORDS: Smart Device, Trash Bin, Waste Container, Microcontroller, GSM, Ultrasonic Sensor.

I. INTRODUCTION 2. Literature Review

Environmental problems are raised by modern cities for 2.1 Research Papers
The most current related work is done by Zavare and his
waste collection and disposal[1]. Therefore, smart waste
colleagues[5] on sensor nodes connected to an Arduino
management systems became essential for cities that aim
board based control station, that uses a GSM module to
to reduce cost and manage resources and time[2].
send the sensor nodes data by SMS to the garbage collecting
Currently, the trend is shifting towards smart devices and
vehicle and to a server hosting web application by a Wi-Fi
internet of things (IoT) solutions to overcome common
connection. The sensor nodes of the smart bins rely on the
problems such as waste management issues[3].
ultrasonic sensor to sense the fullness percentage according
Optimizing the process of trash collection is the main
to pre-calculated bin depth. Moreover, a GPS module is
purpose of the smart solutions provided by industry.
used to get the bin location. The GPS module and the
However, the cost of applying such solutions is still
ultrasonic sensor are controlled by Amica R2 NodeMCU
relatively high [4]. The purpose of this work is to present
microcontroller board which has a built-in Wi-Fi module,
a cost-effective smart trash bin for localized and small-
that is used to connect to the control station.
scale cases, such as small parks, university campus and
Another work on wireless sensor network is done by Singh,
hospitals. The literature of this paper will present a
Mahajan and Bagai[6]. The bins in his work are equipped
literature review of past related papers and commercial
with an accelerometer sensor to sense the opening and
solutions. Then methodology and methods section will
closing of the bin lid, a temperature and humidity sensor to
explain the work of the system and all the hardware and
check the present organic waste, and an ultrasonic sensor
software used in this work, besides the design of the smart
to sense the fullness status of the bin. All these sensors are
trash bin. Finally, the results of tests will be discussed
controlled by Zigbee Pro microcontroller board, which has
followed by conclusions and future work.
a built-in Wi-Fi module that is used to send the sensors data
to a gateway. This paper also used the same type of
Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU) microcontroller board in the gateway to receive the bins
Volume 6, No 3(2017), 8 pages data and send it to a control station, that contains a server,
Received 1 May 2017; Accepted 16 August 2017 over GPRS. The server in the control station relies on
Regular research paper: Published 30 August 2017 Caspio database management system with a web based
Corresponding authors e-mail: [email protected]
user interface.
Copyright 2017 Fady E. F. Samann
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative
A paper by Navghane, Killedar and Rohokale[7] examined
Commons Attribution License. the use of weight sensor and three IR sensors to check the

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142 Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU)

fullness status of the smart bin and send the sensors data to offers IoT sensor that uses a camera to detect the fullness
a web page over Wi-Fi network to a mobile phone. The status of large industrial trash containers. Most of these IoT
microcontroller board used in this paper was ARM sensors and smart bins integrate temperature, tilt and
LPC2148. acceleration sensors to detect vandalism, fire, trash
A report was done by students of California Polytechnic collecting and usage events. All these solutions make use of
State University[8], thoroughly exploited the economic and cellular networks to send data from the IoT sensors and
power consumption aspects of converting a conventional bins to their cloud hosted web-application portal over the
outdoor trash bin into a smart one. According to the internet. These web-applications monitor fullness level,
literature, the project is based on u-blox C027-U20 energy usage, fire alerts, and give real-time readings and
microcontroller board, which has built-in GPS module and historical reports in addition to schedules and routes for
cellular module. The board is used to control HC-SR04 optimized trash collection. Finally, contrary to the
ultrasonic sensor, that measures the bins fullness-level, mentioned solutions, this paper aims to reduce cost by
and a temperature sensor for monitoring weather sending fullness alert without the need for internet
conditions and fire alerts. The setup is contained by 246 connection and web-applications.
plastic box and powered by a 12V rechargeable lead-acid 3. Methodology and Methods
battery. The report mentioned that the system generates an This work will put a design for the smart trash bin, then
HTTP POST request using the data from the sensors and explain the used hardware parts and how it is connected
send it to a web application, which is built using Python together. The software is then explained and illustrated as
and Flask framework on top of an SQLite database. The a flowchart. Figure 1 shows the basic operation of the
web application receives the HTTP request and check if the system. The fullness status of the bin is determined by
bin is full then send SMS message using Twilio service. calculating the distance between the lid of the bin and the
Moreover, Leaflet JavaScript library is used to virtualize the trash by using a sensor. A distance threshold will be set
collected data on a map. In summary, most of the papers according to the bin dimensions. When the distance
above did not focus on covering the overall cost and power measuring sensor indicates that the bin is full, then a
consumption of the system, which are the main issues microcontroller board will control a GSM module to send
tackled by this paper. SMS alert, that contains bin ID and alert message, to a
2.2 Commercial and Industrial Solutions predefined phone number. The location of the bin is
There are several companies offer smart trash bins predefined by a sanitary worker who will identify the filled
managed by a web-based application. ECUBE labs[9] and bin by its ID, which received by the SMS alert. The system
Bigbelly[10] offer smart trash compactor bins, which will return to default operation when the bin is emptied by
powered by solar cell panel and battery. Clean CUBE bin the sanitary worker. An LED will keep blinking until the
uses ultrasonic sensor and Bigbelly smart trash bin uses bin emptied from trash. A memory card will register all the
laser sensor to measure fullness status[9][10]. Moreover, usage and fullness alerts for later analyses. Moreover, a
most companies offer IoT sensors, which can be easily motion sensor will be used to detect the usage event to play
installed on available trash bins. ECUBE labs[9], a thanking audio message stored on the memory card using
ENEVO[11] and SMARTBIN[12] offer battery powered a speaker to encourage the bin user. A block diagram of the
versions of these ultrasonic IoT sensors. Moreover, CUBE system is shown in Figure 2.
labs offer solar powered one. However, COMPOLOGY[13]

Fig 1: Basic operation of the system

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Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU) 143

Fig 2: System Block Diagram

3.1 Design height of the bin from the ground to the end of solar cell
panel is 155cm. The trash container has a cylindrical shape
The system design tries to be cost-effective and user-
of 30cm diameter and 46cm height. However, the height
friendly. Figure 3 shows an outdoor trash bin after and
from the bottom of the bin opening is 27cm, which gives a
before applying the metal work. The design relied on a
volume of 76341cm3. Moreover, all the electronic parts will
commonly used outdoor trash bin, which is redesigned to
be mentioned in the next section are held inside
append an extension arm to hold the solar cell panel. The
(11018077mm) plastic electric junction box, which held
metal work also included adding an 18cm 22cm tray for
underneath the bin lid. This design is applicable to almost
holding any electronic device during charging from the
any standard outdoor trash bin.
USB port, which will be attached to the extension arm. The

Fig 3: The design of smart trash bin, before (right) and after (left) the metal work
3.2 Hardware integrated 5V voltage regulator and can provide serial
The system structure relies on Arduino Nano board. communication over USB with a computer for
According to the datasheet, it is based on ATmega328 programming. It also has 14 digital I/O pins; 6 of them can
microcontroller which has a 16MHz clock speed, 32 KB provide PWM output and 2 external interrupt pins. This
flash memory, 2KB SRAM and 1KB EEPROM. microcontroller supports SPI and I2C communications.
Arduino Nano is a microcontroller breadboard with Moreover, it also has 8 analog I/O pins. All these pins can

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 Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU)

deliver or accept a maximum of 40 mA and has an internal Nano, and the Tx pin of the module is connected to A4 pin
pull-up resistor 20-50 k. All the above comes in a small of the Arduino board. A3 and A4 pins will be turned into
package of 18 x 45 mm and weighs 4g. This Tx/Rx pins using a software library, because of the GSM
microcontroller breadboard was chosen for its size, module relies on serial communication and Arduino Nano
weight, functionality and its programming flexibility. has no extra serial port. An LED, with a 1k resistor, is
Figure 4 and Figure 5 shows the system schematic of the used to give a visual alert when the bin is full. Moreover,
circuit board and how the following electronic parts are a PIR motion detector (HC-SR501) is used to sense when
connected inside the electric junction box. Ultrasonic the trash bin is being used. According to the datasheet, this
ranging module sensor (HC-SR04) is used to detect the sensor has a sensing range of 120 degrees within 7 meters.
fullness level of the trash bin. According to the datasheet, Therefore, the sensor is installed to the side of the plastic
this sensor can detect a 0.5m2 object from a range of 20- box and partially covered to sense only user hand entering
400cm with a 15-degree measuring angle. Moreover, it can the bin. The usage event is triggered by the PIR sensor.
detect liquid and solid objects, and also immune to almost This sensor will interrupt the microcontroller work using
any outdoor interference sources. This sensor returns pin 3 to play a WAV file stored on a MicroSD card, which
Time of Flight (ToF) which is the time interval that is connected to the setup by an adapter from Waveshare.
ultrasonic wave takes to cross back and forward between The audio message is played over 3W/4 speaker driven
the wave source and the material boundary[14]. by an HXJ8002 audio amplifier. The MicroSD card is also
used to log the fullness and usage events inside CSV files
=
2 for further analyses. Finally, the setup of the system is
The system depends on GSM module (sim900a mini powered by off-the-shelf 12000mAh power bank, which
v3.8.2) to send SMS fullness alerts. according to the will also be used to charge any electronic device provided
datasheet, the module can be controlled by sending AT by bin user. The power bank is backed up by 13W/5V
commands over its 5V serial port. The Rx pin of GSM solar cell panel which can supply current up to 2.6A.
module is connected to analog pin A3 on the Arduino

Fig 4: Circuit board schematic

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Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU) 145

Fig 5: Hardware setup

3.3 Software step is done to simplify changing these parameters
The whole program is done using Arduino IDE. Figure 6 without altering the program. The final step of Setup
shows a flow chart of the Arduino program. Four libraries function is initializing digital pin 3 as an interrupt pin to
were used to facilities communicating with the modules. connect the output pin of the PIR module to it. When the
SoftwareSerial library is used to communicate with the voltage rises on the output pin of the PIR module, the
GSM module and send AT commands to it. This library is work of the microcontroller will be interrupted to play the
used because of Arduino Nano does not have an WAV file on the speaker and log the usage event with the
additional serial port, which the GSM module rely on for current time/date stamp on the CSV file.
communication with the microcontroller. This library The Loop function is used to measure the distance
transforms A3 and A4 pins into extra Tx and Rx pins to between the ultrasonic module and the trash every 15
connect the Tx/Rx pins of the GSM module. SPI library is minutes. This time period can be changed hereafter to
used for communicating with the MicroSD module which correspond with real life operating cases. A while loop
depends on Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) data protocol. will iterate while the measured distance is smaller than a
SdFat library is used to manage data and read/write files threshold, which is measured 10cm according to the bin
on the MicroSD card. The last library is TMRpcm, which dimensions. The LED will blink for 5 seconds before a
is used to output the WAV file, stored on the MicroSD, as second measuring is taken inside the while loop to check
PWM signal to digital pin 9 that connected to the speaker. if the measured value still satisfies the condition and no
The Setup function of the Arduino program first defines SMS alert has been sent. After that, the SMS alert message
the used pins as outputs or inputs, then sends AT will be sent and the fullness event will be logged in the
commands to the GSM module to enable text mode, CSV file. Finally, as bookkeeping measure, the balance of
enable local time/date stamp and store current settings on the used SIM card is added to the SMS text before sending
the GSM module memory. The time/date stamp will be it. The balance is obtained by sending Unstructured
stored on CSV files during logging events on. This Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code to the mobile
function is also used to get the phone number and SMS network using AT command, which is executed by the
alert text, which will be sent to that number in case of GSM module.
fullness event, from text files on the MicroSD card. This

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Fig 6: Software flow chart

4. Results and Discussion time fullness status simulated by putting an obstacle in
The smart bin was tested first indoor without charging the front of the ultrasonic sensor.
power bank by the solar cell panel. The system worked as In terms of power consumption, the measured current
intended for it to do. Then the bin was installed outdoor drawn by the whole system was 400mA, despite that the
in the main square of Nawroz University campus for a GSM module has a power rate of 2W/5V. According to the
period of seven days. During this period, the solar cell measured current, the power bank will last for 30 hours
panel managed successfully to charge the power bank and and the solar cell panel will require another 30 hours to
kept the system running. However, after examining the fully charge the power bank. This is can be feasible during
CSV files on the MicroSD card, the realization was that the summer long days, as shown in the first test. However, the
PIR sensor kept going off and interrupt the Arduino board GSM module has a sleep mode which reduces the current
to play the audio message. The main reasons behind this consumption of the module to 1.5mA during the idle
behaviour are heat exposure and reflected sunlight from period. This mode could not be implemented because of
objects inside or around the bin, even though the PIR the power bank is designed to be automatically turned off
sensor datasheet points that the operating temperature of when the power consumption is too low.
the sensor is between -30O C to +70O C. The data sheet In terms of cost, the mobile network subscription was
also noted that light and wind flow can be considered as found satisfactory for giving 100 SMS message per
interference sources. Therefore, a second outdoor test was 5000IQD credit. However, most mobile network
done for another seven days with the PIR sensor is companies put a 90-day expiration period on the credit.
disabled. Despite that, the bin did not get full during this Table 1 shows the overall cost of the system without the
period but the system sent SMS fullness message every cost of the bin itself, because of the system can be applied

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Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU) 147

to almost any type of trash bin. If the PIR sensor and small-scale location, due to the no need for internet
speaker were considered as an accessory, the bare connectivity and computer to track the status of the bins.
minimum cost for the system will be $160. However, keeping aware of the bins locations according
Finally, the solution provided by this system can be to their IDs, which are sent by the fullness SMS message,
effective in managing large numbers of trash bins over a is required for a successful trash collection.
Table 1: Overall cost of the system

Component Fixed cost Periodic cost

Metal work and paint $25

Solar panel $34

Power bank $30

Electric junction box $4

Arduino Nano $12

GSM module $30

Ultrasonic sensor $8

PIR sensor $6
MicroSD card module $5
Other parts and soldering $10
GSM network credit 5000IQD $4
Total $168

5. Conclusion and Future Work automatic shutdown of the power bank. This will also
Most of the past work on this subject focused on utilizing reduce the cost of the system by $20. The option of
cellular network to connect to the internet for sending the charging any electronic device for the bin user can be
sensors data to a server. On the contrary, this paper omitted to reduce cost and receive a better performance
considered using the cellular network to send fullness from the power bank. Moreover, can make use of the
SMS alert directly to the user. Therefore, the work in this concept of gateway or control station that mentioned in [5]
paper can be considered as a smart device, not as IoT and [6] to further reduce the overall cost. However, a
solution. This system does not offer all the facilities that number of bins connected to a single control station and
provided by the web applications of IoT products and range limitation of the Wi-Fi module must be taken into
papers mentioned above. However, the reduction in cost consideration.
offered by this paper is noticeable, if compared with the
In terms of security, the author considers it is unpractical
cost of commercial products and the work in [8] due to
to add accelerometer sensor to send an alert in case of
opting out the presence of an online server. The results of
vandalizing and GPS module to track the bin location in
the indoor test indicate that the setup worked perfectly
case of theft. Accelerometer sensor cannot differentiate
under normal conditions. Moreover, the outdoor tests
between an animal, a person or extreme weather shaking
showed that solar cell panel performed adequately in
the bin. Moreover, the first thing a thief would do is
charging the power bank and keeping the system running.
disconnecting the power from the system, thus the GPS
In terms of mobile network subscription expiration
module will be useless in tracking the bin location.
period, the system can make use of postpaid plan to
However, a temperature or smoke sensor can be added to
overcome this issue. Moreover, a custom-built power
the system to send an alert in case of fire. The advantages
bank is recommended, with the use of USB DC-DC step-
and disadvantages of this work are illustrated in the table
up module, Li-Ion battery charging module and 3.7V Li-
below
Ion rechargeable batteries, to overcome the issue of the

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 Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU)

Table 2: Advantage and Disadvantages of the System

Advantages Disadvantages
Low building cost. Requires manual recharging of mobile network
subscription.
Low operating cost. Requires pre-knowledge of the bins locations.
Can work outdoors and indoors. Security measures depend on build quality and
fixed installation of the bin.
Can run for a long time. Dont send an alert in case of fire.
Low maintenance requirements.
User-friendly design.
It has an AUX USB port to charge external electronic
devices.

[9] Ecube Labs, Smart Waste Management System |

Finally, this paper managed to present a cost-effective and
Waste Analytics | Ecube Labs. [Online]. Available:
user-friendly smart waste container for small-scale cases,
http://ecubelabs.com/.
comparing to the past work mentioned above. As a future
[10] Bigbelly, Bigbelly - Smart City Solutions. [Online].
work, the overall cost can be further reduced if the GSM
Available: http://bigbelly.com/.
module is replaced by Wi-Fi module, which connects to an
[11] Enevo, Waste and Recycling Services Right-Sized For
intranet WLAN to send the fullness alert to the user
You | Enevo. [Online]. Available:
mobile phone. This will remove the periodic cost of mobile
http://www.enevo.com/.
network subscription and reduce the power consumption
[12] Smart Bin, Smartbin |Smart City|Smart
of the system.
Monitoring|Ultrasonic Level Sensor. [Online].
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